Neoconservatism has long had a tenuous relationship with International Relations theory. Despite an abundance of explanatory material and its influence in US foreign policy, few works in IR have attempted to build a stand-alone theory out of it. Furthermore, previous work on the topic has resulted in an under-developed and poor understanding of the movement’s core ideas. The thesis redefines neoconservatism as a trifecta of i) a set of explanatory ideas on world politics, ii) an approach to foreign policy, and iii) an ideology that stems from the European Enlightenment, all the way to the present day. Using this expanded conceptualization, the thesis builds a theory out of what can broadly be considered an ideology. The theory takes the form of an ideal-type construct and emphasizes hegemony in the international system. It offers an explanation for the causes of alliances, as well as regional and systemic conflicts. The theory also adopts a prescriptive function and offers an account of foreign policy analysis. It is highly recommended that the assumptions of the theory that are laid out here be tested in future work.

Certaines lignées de plantes tendent à rester dans le même biome au cours du temps (conservatisme de biome), tandis que d’autres semblent s’adapter plus facilement à de nouveaux biomes (changements de biome). Les ~396 espèces (14 genres) de la sous-famille des Cercidoideae se retrouvent dans plusieurs biomes à travers le monde, en particulier dans les régions tropicales de l’Amérique du Sud, de l’Asie et de l’Afrique. Ces espèces diffèrent aussi au niveau de leur port, pouvant être des arbres, arbustes, lianes ou herbacées. Après avoir établi une liste révisée d’espèces de la sous-famille, incluant tous les synonymes connus et leurs noms acceptés, des données d’occurrence ont été téléchargées depuis le Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) et d’autres bases de données d’herbiers. Après avoir nettoyé les données d’occurrences, des cartes de répartition des espèces ont été produites. Ces cartes ont été comparées avec des cartes publiées de biomes tropicaux afin d’attribuer chaque espèce à un biome et à un continent. Les biomes de forêt tropicale humide (179 espèces), de savane (117 espèces), succulent (65 espèces) et tempéré (7 espèces et sous-espèces) ont été identifiés comme importants pour décrire la répartition globale des Cercidoideae, avec plusieurs espèces se trouvant dans plus d’un biome. Après avoir reconstruit une phylogénie calibrée dans le temps, nous avons effectué des estimations de caractères ancestraux afin d’évaluer le nombre et la direction des changements de biome, de port et de continent. Les analyses suggèrent que plusieurs changements de biomes ont eu lieu dans l’histoire évolutive de la sous-famille, les changements du biome succulent à la forêt tropicale humide et de la forêt tropicale humide à la savane étant les plus communs, tandis qu’il n’y avait aucun changement depuis la savane. Sept changements de port ont eu lieu, dont trois qui sont associés à des changements de biome (un est caractéristique du genre Tylosema (Schweinf.) Torre & Hillc., un du genre Lysiphyllum (Benth.) de Wit et un de l’espèce Phanera retusa Benth.). Les analyses montrent aussi que les changements de biomes tendent à avoir lieu au sein d’un même continent et que les dispersions vers de nouveaux continents tendent à se produire au sein d’un même biome. Par contraste avec d’autres sous-familles de légumineuses plus conservées au niveau des biomes, les changements fréquents observés au sein des Cercidoideae suggèrent une capacité d’adaptation à des environnements significativement différents à travers le temps. / Some plant lineages remain within the same biome over time (biome conservatism), whereas others seem to adapt more easily to new biomes (biome shifts). The ~396 species (14 genera) in subfamily Cercidoideae of Leguminosae (Fabaceae) are found in many biomes around the world, particularly in the tropical regions of South America, Asia and Africa, and display a variety of habits/growth forms (small trees, shrubs, lianas and herbs). After establishing an updated expert-verified species list, including all known synonyms and their accepted names, we downloaded and cleaned occurrence records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other herbarium databases to produce species distribution maps. These maps were compared with existing biome maps to attribute species to biomes and continents. Rainforest (179 species), savanna (117 species), succulent (65 species) and temperate (7 species and subspecies) biomes were found to be important in describing the global distribution of Cercidoideae, with many species occurring in multiple biomes. After reconstructing a time-calibrated phylogeny, we performed ancestral state reconstructions to evaluate the number and direction of shifts in biome, habit and continents. Analyses suggest multiple biome shifts throughout the phylogeny, shifts from succulent to rainforest and from rainforest to savanna being the most common, while no shifts were observed from the savanna. Seven shifts in habit occurred, of which at least three were associated with biome shifts (one subtends the genus Tylosema (Schweinf.) Torre & Hillc., one subtends the genus Lysiphyllum (Benth.) de Wit and one occurs in Phanera retusa Benth.). Analyses also show that biome shifts tend to occur within the same continent and that dispersals to new continents tend to occur within the same biome. In contrast to other more biome-conserved legume subfamilies, the frequent shifts observed in Cercidoideae suggest ability for adaptation to significantly different environments through time.

This study examines the ideological shift towards right-wing conservatism within specific segments of the Polish contemporary art scene following the Law and Justice Party (PiS) rise in 2015. The party's cultural policies, aligned with nationalist and right-wing ideologies, brought significant changes to institutions like Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (CSW), reflecting a broader trend seen in Poland for many years. Through the exhibition Sztuka Polityczna (2021) at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, this study investigates the conservative discourse shaping Polish art. The study employs Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to map the actors, networks, and power dynamics influencing the exhibition's discourse. Utilizing political scientist Andrew Heywood's pillars of conservatism, the study analyzes the interplay between conservatism and contemporary art, focusing on CSW's director Piotr Bernatowicz’s trajectory toward a conservative outlook on contemporary art. The analysis of Sztuka Polityczna reveals the influence of "avant-garde conservatism," a theory formulated by philosopher Paweł Rojek, that merges populism, culture war rhetoric, conservatism, and national identity to redefine conservatism in modern Poland. Bernatowicz's role in promoting issues like cancel culture underscores the exhibition's unconventional discourse. While the study acknowledges the limitations of a single exhibition's scope, the systemic influence of conservative tendencies on Polish contemporary art suggests a broader trend with potential future ramifications for the European art scene. The findings underscore the possible instrumentalization of contemporary art to conform to political ideologies.

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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Sue Zschoche / Despite an impressive history of woman-friendly legislation, Kansans tend to be socially conservative. The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, was the culmination of over a century's worth of women's activism attempting to remove the strictures of coverture and to recognize women as citizens in their own right, not as wives or as mothers of male citizens. After largely ignoring the amendment for fifty years, Congress finally passed the ERA in 1972 and submitted it to the states for ratification. Almost immediately, the real and imagined consequences of the legislation provoked a passionate debate among mostly middle-class white women about the meaning of American womanhood. Liberals hoped that the ERA would remove existing barriers to women's educational and professional life; conservatives feared that the ERA would cause women to focus on selfish interests outside of their households, rotting the foundations of family life and American strength. In Kansas, women from both camps converged to discuss the future of the ERA at the feminist-organized Kansas Women's Weekend of July 15-17, 1977, resulting in Kansas sending a conservative faction to the federally funded National Women's Conference later that year. Conservatives failed to derail the convention's feminist agenda, nor were they able to enact a rescission of Kansas' ratification, but in the long run they succeeded in creating widespread uneasiness about the social consequences of the ERA. The vitriolic anti-ERA campaign demonstrated the extent to which female dependency still defined both male and female conservatives' views on the interrelatedness of family, religion, manliness, and national strength. This dissertation explores a volume of letters to Kansas legislators expressing anti-ERA sentiment. The letters provide a unique lens through which to examine the passions aroused by the ERA among grassroots conservatives. Contextualizing this issue are other conservative reactions to feminist activity from the Revolution onward that consistently demonstrate how conservatives valorize female dependency. Although the liberal position regarding women's rights has changed significantly over two hundred years, conservative reaction has invariably embraced and elevated the patriarchal family as proper and necessary to the smooth functioning of a Christian republic.

The incarceration rate in the United States has increased dramatically in the period since 1945. How did the United States move from having stable incarceration rates in line with global norms to the largest system of incarceration in the world? This study examines the political and intellectual aspects of incarceration and theories of criminal justice by looking at the contributions of journalists, intellectuals and policy makers to the debate on whether the purpose of the justice system is rehabilitation, vengeance, deterrence or incapacitation. This thesis finds that justice and the institution of the prison itself are not immutable facts of modern civilization, but are human institutions vulnerable to the influence of politics, culture and current events.

During the 1980s, the government of Great Britain, led by Margaret Thatcher, promoted a political and economic ideology known in the demotic as the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture. This set of beliefs and actions included an encouragement of hard work, thrift, self-responsibility, and self-employment, as well as legislating for the support of small firms, privatisation, free markets and a strong - but minimal - central state. Behind the Enterprise Culture lay a religious paradigm, explicitly called upon by its chief creators, including Margaret Thatcher. The thesis builds an ideal-type of the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture, following a Weberian methodology, to form the major object of study. The work aims to discover whether the ideal-type under analysis is theologically coherent, and whether it can justifiably claim to be a continuation of Christian thought in this area. This thesis examines the development of Western European philosophy and theology as it relates to the key aspects of the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture, beginning with the Ancient Greeks and concluding with the Victorian Age of Enterprise. The historical review demonstrates that the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture is generally discontiguous with the tradition of religious thought, and in some instances is essentially in direct contradiction with important aspects of the tradition, such as the significance of the Incarnation. A review of the theological works of the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture and its critics adds to the findings of the historical examination, indicating further flaws and contradictions within Enterprise Theology. Critics of Enterprise Theology are found to be much more consistent with mainstream Christian Theology.

O termo bancada da bala descreve as bancadas suprapartidárias do Legislativo compostas majoritariamente por egressos das forças de segurança, cuja agenda se organiza em torno de temas da segurança pública. Seus membros são associados a uma visão autoritária e repressiva de controle social, aos interesses da indústria armamentista e a uma tensão constante com a política de Direitos Humanos. O sucesso e a articulação política de candidatos com esse perfil são retratados midiaticamente como expressão de uma onda conservadora no cenário político e social brasileiro. No entanto, a estruturação desses grupos não é um fenômeno recente, principalmente para o legislativo paulista que, desde 1987, apresenta grupos de deputados-policiais favoráveis a políticas de mano dura. Buscou-se compreender a estruturação desses grupos, com base em autores da Sociologia da Punição que identificam reconfigurações semelhantes no campo de controle do crime na maioria das democracias contemporâneas (como políticas de contenção contraditórias e ambivalentes, transformações nos discursos oficiais em relação ao crime no sentido de um populismo penal, crescimento dos sentimentos de insegurança e sua instrumentalização pela esfera política e eleitoreira). Investigou-se como essas questões se organizam nos discursos de deputadospoliciais da 18ª legislatura da Assembleia Legislativa de São Paulo, comparando-os aos discursos da chamada bancada da segurança, eleita pela primeira vez na 11ª legislatura. Realizou-se a pesquisa documental sobre as proposições legislativas, sessões e frentes parlamentares mediante a análise do discurso com base no instrumental analítico foucaultiano. Observou-se uma trajetória de continuidade entre os grupos em que a matriz da guerra estende-se para além dos objetos clássicos do penal e do trabalho policial, tornando-se um organizador de mundo pelo qual se definem as fronteiras entre o bem, a legitimidade, a ordem e suas respectivas oposições. O principal desdobramento observado é a maneira como os deputados da 18ª legislatura mobilizam um discurso gerencialista da cidade que se mostra estratégico para o discurso do populismo penal, em que o princípio de tolerância zero é agenciado sobre toda sorte de comportamentos, figuras e atividades presentes nos espaços de grande circulação de pessoas e mercadorias. Conclui-se que a estruturação desses grupos se realiza discursivamente e politicamente, não apenas em relação à identidade policial, pautas corporativas e bandeiras securitizadoras, mas também na forma como esses elementos geram identificação, conferem legitimidade, se combinam e atualizam sensibilidades e representações enraizadas socialmente. Esses elementos acrescem discursos sobre o fenômeno da punição, que, por sua vez, fala à sociedade muito mais do que em termos de crime e castigo: canaliza ansiedades e insatisfações, produz solidariedade, organiza o mundo conforme diferentes territórios morais. Assim, os discursos mobilizados por bancadas da bala possibilitam comunicações com públicos e grupos políticos diversos, reorganizando conservadorismos nos campos político e de controle do crime. / The expression bullet caucus describes supra-party organized groups of legislators composed mostly of former members of police and military forces, whose agenda is built around public security issues. Its members are associated with an authoritarian and repressive vision of social control, as with the interests of the arms industry, and constant tension over human rights policies. The media portrays the success and political articulation of candidates in this profile as an expression of a conservative rise in the Brazilian political and social scene. However, the emergence of these groups is not a recent phenomenon, especially for the São Paulo legislature, which since 1987 has had groups of police-officer-congressmen in favor of hard-hitting policies. We sought to understand the constitution of these groups, based on authors of Sociology of Punishment who identify similar reconfigurations in the field of crime control in most contemporary democracies (such as contradictory and ambivalent containment policies, changes in official discourses on crime towards criminal populism, growing feelings of insecurity, and their instrumentalization by the political and electoral spheres). We investigated how these issues appear in speeches of police-officercongressmen of the 18th legislature of the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo, comparing them to speeches of the so-called security caucus, elected for the first time in the 11th legislature. Documentary research on legislative propositions, legislative sessions, and congressional fronts was carried out using discourse analysis, based on Foucaultian analytical instruments. Continuity has been observed between the two groups, to which the image of war reaches far beyond the classic subjects of criminal law and law enforcement, becoming a world organizer that defines the boundaries between good, legitimacy, order, and their respective oppositions. The main development observed was the way in which congressmen of the 18th São Paulo state legislature resort to a managerial discourse about the city, strategically favoring tendencies of penal populism, which enforces principles of zero tolerance over all sorts of behaviors, figures and activities found in massive people and goods circulation areas. We concluded that the structuring of these groups takes place discursively and politically, referring to police identity, corporate topics and public security causes, and enabling these elements to generate identification, confer legitimacy, and combine and update firmly rooted social sensitivities and representations. These elements add discourses on the phenomenon of punishment, which, in turn, speaks to society much more than in terms of crime and punishment: it channels anxieties and dissatisfaction, produces solidarity, and organizes the world according to different moral territories. The discourses mobilized by bullet caucuses communicate with distinct publics and political groups, reorganizing conservatism in the political and crime control fields.

Este trabalho trata do pensamento social conservador na modernidade brasileira contemporânea. O texto parte de uma análise da bibliografia consagrada sobre conservadorismo, modernidade contemporânea e brasileira, analisando suas categorias fundamentais e colocando-as em contraste com uma análise empírica do pensamento social de um grupo de indivíduos conservadores imersos na modernidade brasileira: o movimento escoteiro no Brasil. As conclusões indicam que o fenômeno do pensamento conservador brasileiro segue uma lógica própria, de um conservadorismo progressista, distinto daquele encontrado em outros países europeus e anglo-saxônicos. / This dissertation deals with the conservative social thought in contemporary Brazilian modernity. The text begins with a review of the literature devoted about conservatism and contemporary Brazilian modernity, analyzing its key categories and contrasting to an empirical analysis of social thought in a conservative group immersed in Brazilian modernity: the boy scout movement in Brazil. The conclusions indicate that the phenomenon of conservative thought in Brazil follows its own logic: a \"progressive conservatism\" as distinct from that one found in other European and Anglo-Saxon countries.

Normas contábeis e normas fiscais desempenham um papel fundamental dentre os determinantes da qualidade da informação contábil. A Lei nº 11.638, de 2007, legitimou o processo de adoção das Normas Internacionais de Contabilidade (IFRS) no Brasil e introduziu um regime contábil desvinculado da finalidade tributária no país. Dentre os objetivos da referida Lei, estão a redução da influência da legislação fiscal nas normas contábeis e a melhora da qualidade do reporte financeiro, uma vez que as IFRS são consideradas normas de qualidade superior. A literatura internacional apresenta evidências de redução no poder informativo dos lucros em ambientes nos quais normas contábeis e tributárias estão fortemente vinculadas. Ademais, a influência da legislação fiscal sobre a contabilidade financeira é apontada como um incentivo ao conservadorismo incondicional, um viés que não apresenta vantagens à eficiência contratual nos mercados financeiros por não atribuir informação nova ao investidor. Nesse sentido, espera-se que a neutralidade tributária, instituída a partir da Lei nº 11.638/07, proporcione ao Brasil um ambiente institucional mais adequado ao reporte financeiro de qualidade, ao desvincular a contabilidade financeira da contabilidade fiscal. Diante do exposto, a presente pesquisa tem por objetivo investigar se o advento da neutralidade tributária influencia o conservadorismo incondicional nas companhias de capital aberto no Brasil. A metodologia utilizada envolve regressões para dados em painel. A amostra é composta por companhias abertas brasileiras com informações divulgadas na base de dados Economática® no período de 2002 a 2014. Os resultados evidenciam diferenças na relação entre tributação e reporte financeiro entre firmas sujeitas a diferentes níveis de pressão no mercado acionário brasileiro. São encontrados indícios de conservadorismo incondicional em empresas sujeitas a maior pressão do mercado acionário, apenas. Nesse mesmo grupo, observa-se que a tributação não induz o conservadorismo incondicional nos lucros divulgados, o que é esperado num contexto de neutralidade tributária. / Accounting standards and tax rules play a key role between determinants of accounting information´s quality. Law No. 11.638/2007 legitimized the adoption process of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Brazil, introducing a decoupled system of tax accounting purposes in the country. The main objectives of Law No. 11.638/2007are to improve financial reporting´s quality and reduce the influence of tax law on accounting standards. International literature shows evidence of lower earnings quality in environments where accounting rules and tax rules are closely linked. Furthermore, the influence of tax legislation on financial accounting is an incentive to unconditional conservatism, pointed as an accounting bias that does not give new information to investors and no advantage to contractual efficiency in financial markets. In this sense, it is expected that tax neutrality to provide an enabling Brazil to improved financial reporting institutional environment, reduction unconditional conservatism in reported earnings. Given the above, this research aims to investigate whether fiscal neutrality influences unconditional conservatism in public companies in Brazil.The methodology involves regressions for panel data. The sample is composed by Brazilian companies with disclosures on the basis of Economática® database in the period 2002-2014. The results show differences in the relationship between taxation and financial reporting among firms subject to different pressure levels in the Brazilian stock market. Unconditional conservatism is found in companies subject to greater pressure from the stock market only. In this same group, it is observed that taxation does not induce unconditional conservatism in reported profits, which is expected in a tax neutrality context.